Biblical Hebrew Forum

["C. Stirling Bartholomew" <jacksonpollock AT earthlink.net>]

Of all the exegetical/textual lost causes I have run across recently nothing
tops Job 39:13. The LXX (OG) omits the whole ostrich sequence. Theodotian
uses three transliterations among eight words. Gordis, Habel, Dhorme, Pope
just confirm that the dozens of solutions proposed are all
shots-in-the-dark. 

Working in Attic drama (e.g. Iphigenia At Aulis), where the textual evidence
is extremely thin, one does run into lines that offer serious resistance but
the lexical database is huge and conjectures often give a comfortable
feeling of high probability. I don't get that feeling working in Job 38-39.
  
What do professional editors and interpreters of texts like Job do after
work to get over it?
  

greetings,
Clay Bartholomew 
 
I have worked on more than my share of large scale lost causes and I thought
that biblical philology was going to get me away from all that angst.